Morrison turned his head from side to side as though his collar was too tight.
'I think he said it was–incredible. But he wouldn't say what it was. He just said it was worth the risk. He said it was priceless.'
The words tumbled out now as though Morrison couldn't get rid of them fast enough.
'And it was in the boxes.'
Morrison nodded. 'I suppose so.'
'How many boxes? Seven?'
'I think so.'
'Were they heavy?'
'I don't know. He–Steerforth–and Tierney carried them aboard. I just kept a look-out.'
That was all he was worth. Just a look-out man.
The shop door-bell rang. Audley turned to find an entire family trooping in, breaking the spell utterly, destroying the illusion. Morrison sighed with relief.
'What time do you close, Mr Morrison?'
'Five-thirty.'
'We'll be back at 5.25. We can take our time then. I know you can remember a great deal more if you try.'
He turned to go, but the man's courage had risen in the presence of others.
'I didn't catch your name, sir.'
Audley toyed with the idea of maintaining the element of uncertainty. But it would be embarrassing if Morrison then did the sensible thing and called the police. In any case, they had him now, and their official status would probably strengthen their hand rather than weaken it. He held his identification open for Morrison to see, just above the spotty face of the latest customer.
'Until 5.25, then, Mr Morrison. Don't go away.'
Outside the crowds seemed even thicker and more determined. The two small boys were still glued to the window, and one of them instantly buttonholed Roskill.
'Mister. Wot's that one?'
Roskill peered into the window again. 'Savoia-Marchetti SM 79,' he said shortly. 'Italian torpedo bomber.' Then he turned to Audley. 'There's a tea shop over the road. We can wait there.'
Audley nodded morosely. He had told Faith Jones he would be home by three, then by six. Now it would be more like seven. His quiet Saturday routine was totally dislocated. And Sunday would be equally ruined, since it was now clearly imperative to grill Tierney and the others as quickly as possible.
Roskill was a man who put his stomach first, an old campaigner: he consumed a schoolboy's tea with relish before attempting to make serious conversation, while Audley toyed with a sickly cake.
Finally he dusted off the crumbs, carefully wiped his fingers and grinned at Audley.
'That was bad luck, just when you'd got him on toast. But I've got a tape of it in case he gets forgetful'–he patted his coat pocket–'or stubborn. Do you think he knows what it was?'
Audley shrugged. It was quite possible that Steerforth had kept the nature of the cargo to himself, or shared the secret only with Tierney.
'It isn't vital yet, anyway, Hugh. What we need is a line on the hiding place.'
'Always supposing it's still there.'
'It's there.' He had to keep on believing in that.
'But they won't have the answer.'
'They won't. But remember, they've never really thought of looking for it. If they're like Jones they'll have thought that Steerforth was alive, which meant there was no point in looking.'
'How are they going to give us a line on the stuff then?'
'It's the time factor, Hugh–they can narrow down the time factor for us. Remember the breakdown of Steerforth's movements in the file?'
'You mean between the flight in on Tuesday and the flight back to Berlin on Friday?'
Audley nodded. 'That's the crucial period, yes. They brought the boxes in on Tuesday evening. They got them off the plane somehow–we want to know how and where. There must have been a temporary hiding place then.'
'Steerforth was duty officer from 08.30 on Wednesday to the same time on Thursday, wasn't he?'
'Right. And he went to London all day Thursday with the navigator and Wojek the Pole. So he had just Tuesday and Thursday nights to shift the boxes, which didn't give him much scope, I'm hoping.'
'And you really think we stand a chance of tracking the stuff down?'
'Depends on how much we can make people remember, Hugh. And whether we're lucky–as he was.'
Roskill cocked an eyebrow. 'Steerforth was lucky?'
'If I've got it worked out right he had to have one real piece of luck. Look at it this way: he takes over a cargo in Berlin to deliver to that Belgian Butler's looking for at the moment. He takes a look at it and decides to keep it for himself.
'Now he's got two problems. First he's got to double-cross his employers so they won't come chasing him. He does that by pretending he can't bring the stuff out on the first trip and then by losing the aircraft, complete with a dummy cargo, on the second trip.
'But he's also got the practical problem of finding somewhere to put the genuine cargo in the meantime. And he has to come up with the answer to that sometime during the flight back on Tuesday. The first problem sounds harder, but it wasn't really. They just had to get their stories right. They'd had to bale out once before, so they knew the drill. It was the second problem that was awkward.
'It has to be some beautiful, simple, hiding place, because he hadn't time for anything elaborate. And that's where he was lucky, because it was so good that those boxes are almost certainly still where he put them.'
The traffic and the crowds had thinned appreciably when they left the tea shop. The pavement outside Morrison's Model Shop was empty.
But when they were halfway across the road Roskill paused in mid-stride, cursed and accelerated.
'I think the little bastard may have run out on us,' he exclaimed.
Audley hurried after him. The blind on the shop door was pulled down, to reveal its 'Closed' legend, and the door itself was locked.
Roskill looked up and down the street. 'These shops must have a back entrance,' he said. 'If you'll watch the front I'll try the back.'
Audley settled down self-consciously in front of the window. At his eye-level it was clean, but lower down small dirty hands and runny noses had left a tide mark. The models on show were meticulously made; he could even see tiny pilots in the cockpits. Did Morrison spend his free evenings crouched over a desk with glue and tweezers and fine paint brushes? Or did the manufacturers have a staff of middle-aged women who spent their lives endlessly assembling their products to catch the imaginations of small boys?
It seemed an age before the door rattled as Roskill unlocked it to let him in. He felt absurdly like a thief being admitted by his confederate–the more so because Roskill dropped the latch as soon as he was inside.
'Has he gone?'
Roskill shook his head and beckoned him.
'No, he hasn't gone anywhere.'
Audley followed him through the shop into an untidy stockroom. A dingy office ahead was littered with invoices and printed lists which had overflowed an old roll-top desk: Morrison was an untidy businessman. But Roskill pointed to an open door on the left, leading to what was obviously a cellar beneath the shop.
'He's down there. And he's dead.'
Audley squeezed past a packing case and stared down the worn wooden staircase. A single naked bulb hung from a flex at the foot of the stairs, and Morrison lay in a heap directly beneath it. One of his legs rested awkwardly on the stairway, the trouser leg rucked up to reveal a pathetic expanse of white flesh. There was a hole in the sole of his shoe. Halfway up the stairs his glasses lay, unbroken. He had been a small man in life. Now he seemed even smaller.
Audley felt a mixture of revulsion and relief. He had feared, or half-feared, a pointless suicide, for which he might have had to take some of the blame. This ridiculous accident would be less embarrassing, however inconvenient.
'He fell down these stairs?'
'Maybe.' Roskill looked at him coldly. 'And then again maybe not.'
The hair on the back of Audley's neck prickled: that 'maybe not' was like a death sentence.
'I t
ook a very quick look at him. Just on the off-chance that he wasn't as dead as he looked,' said Roskill. 'He had a nosebleed before he … fell down the stairs.'
'Before?'
'He bled down his shirt. But you don't bleed down your shirt when you're falling downstairs. And you don't go to the cellar when your nose is bleeding — not when the washroom's out in the yard.'
'Are you saying that someone killed him?'
He stared down the staircase again, taking in the ancient, flaking whitewash on the walls and the dust-laden cobwebs hanging from rusty nails. It didn't make sense. Violence was rare because it almost always stirred up more trouble than it stifled. Nor was it the present Russian style, certainly not in England, where it was capable of launching a major scandal.
But reason and instinct wouldn't raise Morrison from the dead. And there was no sweeping him under the carpet either.
'All right, Hugh. We'll go by the book. I'll phone the police first. Then you phone the department. Tell the duty officer to warn Stocker. And when Butler phones in tell them to warn him too–if someone followed us down here they could be following him over there.'
It was like a nightmare; bad enough to be pitched into the field, out of his depth–but worse to be involved in incomprehensible violence.
'How much do you want the police to know?'
'We've got to know how he died. But either way we shall have to get them to go easy on it — you better get Stocker on that. No doubt he'll know how to do it. And go through Morrison's pockets while I'm phoning–there might be something there.'
He turned back to the faded black telephone in the untidy little office. The important thing now was to keep the initiative, to emulate Fred, whose dealings with the Special Branch were always conducted in a manner which left no doubt as to who was calling the tune.
'… This is Dr D. L. Audley of the Ministry of Defence.' L'Etat, c'est moi. 'I am speaking from the Modeller's Shop in—' he stumbled for want of the address. But there it was on an old-fashioned letterhead. 'There seems to have been a fatal accident, but I'm not altogether satisfied with the circumstances.'
That was the authentic Fred note: not so much an investigation as a consultation required. Just in time he remembered the final refinement: 'Kindly send a senior officer with your squad.'
When Roskill took over the phone he went back into the shop, which was clean and cheerful compared with the stockroom. Just behind the counter was a low stool, with a small, smooth-edged hole in the linoleum below it–the hole Morrison had worn over hundreds of uneventful days, sitting waiting to sell models to small boys.
Audley's brief flicker of self-satisfaction faded. No more pocket-warmed coins would cross this counter; the supermarket next door would inevitably take over.
He'd met Morrison for five minutes and bullied the life out of him. Whatever the cause of death was, the guilt was his, and he'd compounded his crime by feeling nothing but distaste and annoyance for the inconvenient thing in the cellar.
He looked down at the cutting Roskill had taken from the man's a wallet: ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS FOUND. No one deserved to have his minor crimes come looking for him after half a lifetime, least of all a crime which had gained him nothing but a bad conscience. It was a poor recompense for Normandy, Arnhem and the Rhine, the days of fear and danger.
There was a peremptory rap on the door, which caught him unprepared. He had expected to hear the familiar klaxon first.
'Dr Audley? You put through an emergency call?'
'I am Audley. I put through the call. Mr Morrison appears to have fallen down the stairs into the cellar–through there. He's dead.'
He lead the party, which had shed a uniformed man at the door, through into the stockroom. Roskill, still busy on the phone, nodded to them without pausing in mid-sentence.
The leading member of the squad peered down the staircase for a moment, nodded to the other two men and turned back to Audley. He was a large man, taller even than Audley, with a mild, quizzical expression. He looked as if he had seen everything, heard everything, believed very little of it, and could no longer be surprised by anything.
'I'm Detective Inspector Roberts, sir. Could I see your identification please?'
Audley passed the folder over.
'And this gentleman?'
'Squadron Leader Roskill, my colleague.'
'Might I ask who he is telephoning?'
'The Ministry.'
'Are you here on official business, sir?'
'We are.'
'Might I know the nature of that business, sir?'
'Mr Morrison was helping us with some information concerning a matter we are investigating, inspector. A matter falling under the Official Secrets Act. He was only marginally concerned with it. We spoke to him briefly early in the afternoon and arranged to see him again at 5.25, just before he closed. We found the shop locked, and Squadron Leader Roskill went round to the service entrance. He found the body at the bottom of the stairs.'
Roberts nodded. 'You said in your message that you were not altogether satisfied with the circumstances here, sir. Could you tell me why?'
Audley repeated what Roskill had said.
'Inspector, there was no question of any proceedings against Mr Morrison. He was disturbed by our visit, but there was no reason why he should take his own life. If he wanted to, in any case, I don't think he would have used such a method. When I first saw him down there I thought it must have been an accident. I still think so.
'But if there is any question of foul play it is of the very greatest importance that this is established quickly.'
Roberts gave him an old-fashioned look.
'Can you think of any reason–any reason that you can tell me–why anyone might harm Mr Morrison, sir?'
'Honestly, inspector–no. This sort of thing just doesn't happen. Not now–not here.'
'A lot of strange things happen now — and here, Dr Audley.'
'Not this sort of thing, inspector. But if it has, we have to know, so I'd like you to make a special effort.'
Roskill joined them, thrusting out a hand to be shaken.
'I'm to blame, inspector. Sorry about that, but when you don't like the look of a thing you can't make it look right by thinking about it.'
The inspector smiled for the first time, and it occurred to Audley that his own confidence over being able to handle the police from a lofty height was misplaced. Everything he had said had been either pompous or stilted, while Roskill had set everything in perspective and at the right level in a couple of easy sentences.
'Dr Audley's right, of course–this sort of nastiness is out of date now,' Roskill continued. 'But people don't fall downstairs when I want to talk to them either. They run away.'
He passed over a sheet of paper to the inspector.
'You'll want to do some checking on us. There are some names and telephone numbers to check on.
'And just to set your mind at rest I can detail our movements for you. There was a family in here when we left–I can describe the badge on the boys' blazers. And there were two lads outside all the time–from a local secondary school almost certainly. They may have seen something, and they'll remember me. I can give you a full statement.'
The inspector relaxed visibly, and it further dawned on Audley that he had equally stupidly overlooked the need to establish not their status, but their innocence. His own assumption of authority and their equivocal position had set an awkward question of protocol, which he had not had the sense to resolve simply because it had never occurred to him.
The shop doorbell rang.
'That'll be our surgeon,' said Roberts. 'Are you a medical doctor, sir?'
Audley shook his head.
'Well, you won't mind if we get on with things. And I won't detain you long. In fact Squadron Leader Roskill can give us all the necessary details, and you can endorse his statement later if you wish.'
Which was one way, thought Audley, of saying 'I don't quite know who or what you a
re, you self-important sod, but I'd much rather deal with your underling anyway'. And fair enough, too. Complicated trouble this early on a Saturday, with the evening still stretching ahead, would be enough to set any policeman's teeth on edge.
Roberts turned away without waiting for an answer, under cover of showing the way for the police surgeon and the photographer who was with him.
Roskill caught Audley's eye.
'I got straight through to Stocker. He's going to smooth things down, and he said we'd better clear this end up and then pack it in until tomorrow. But if you like I'll hang on here and see if they find anything–I can give you the details in the morning.'
'Can they get Butler back?'
'He'll be back.' Roskill grinned. 'He won't get much sleep, but that'll only sharpen his claws. Oh–and they're sending a man up to Knaresborough to keep an eye on Tierney and another down to Asham to watch over Jones now. Just in case, Stocker said.'
There seemed to be manpower to spare, certainly. It had never been like this in the Middle East. But he didn't like the way Stocker was manipulating the action, and there was a suspicion now at the back of his mind that Roskill's primary role might well be to keep Stocker informed of the progress of events.
It was time to assert himself a little, anyway.
'Very well, Hugh. You stay on here. You can pick me up tomorrow and we'll take Tierney as planned. But I don't think he'll be so easy, so we'll do it in two stages. First, you and Butler can approach him officially. Then—'
He paused for effect.
'Then Miss Steerforth and I will have a go.'
The effect was gratifying enough: he had every bit of Roskill's attention for the first time since tea. But to leave him dangling now would be small-minded. If he was reporting back to Stocker it was only because he had been ordered to. And it was not Roskill's fault that the afternoon had ended so badly: leaving Morrison had been Audley's own mistake.
'If Tierney's the man he used to be he'll be tricky, Hugh. He'll know more and tell less. So I'd like you to push his good side, and if that doesn't work I'm going to tempt his bad one. We might get somewhere between us.'
The Labyrinth Makers Page 7